Lan Barnes wrote:
Programming is fun for programmers. Come to think of it, limited as I am
as a developer, it's still fun for me, too. Disciplined development --
documentation, commenting (no, they're _not_ the same), proper unit
testing, task-driven development etc -- is not so fun. Programmers,
especially young ones, see these things as shackles on their creativity.
Yup. In a lot of ways, just having good discipline is what really
matters. This was one of the reasons why XP was initially greeted with
much skepticism. The feeling was that sure they were successful when
they had an exceptional team, but really it wasn't the methodology that
was making them successful.
Ironically, I also suspect this was one of the reasons why Beck pushed
for "Extreme" adoption of best practices. By taking out notions of
compromise, middle ground, etc., you leave little cover for slacking off
or breaking discipline (keep in mind that the project had been a walking
disaster for over a year, so bad habits were deeply ingrained). Not
necessarily the best way to solve it, but undoubtedly effective.
--Chris
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